


On the Propagation of Enchanted Confiers, Vol. II

by CypressSunn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drugs, Everybody Lives, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Misplaced Guilt, Pining, Poor Life Choices, Truth Serum, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:15:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26458561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: Eliot does not understand puns. Quentin hates illusion magic.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 83
Collections: 101 Prompts Meme, pine4pine 2020





	On the Propagation of Enchanted Confiers, Vol. II

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessalae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/gifts).



> Prompt #37: Truth

Eliot tells anyone who asks that he doesn’t remember what it was like riding shotgun in his own body. It is a simple enough lie if he sticks to it. He has met no resistance to the answer. In fact, most people seem more comfortable with the idea than the alternative; that when The Monster cleared out there was nowhere left to hide from the memories that remained. That Eliot has the faces of dead and murdered innocents burned into his brain. That Eliot remembers how the thing wearing his face toyed with each and every one of his friends, threatening them with harm and certain death. That Eliot can recall with perfect clarity the look on Quentin’s face as he gleefully and endlessly abused by him—

“For the millionth time, El!” Margo’s sharp tone forces Eliot out of his painful reverie, sending him sprawling out of the lounge chair. He hits the green knoll below while Margo brandishes her wine glass and continues her tirade above him. “Wait, no, I think we might be in the billions. This may in fact be the billionth time I’ve had to remind you that if you want to talk to Quentin, all you have to do is get up and go.”

“Bambi, might I remind you in return that I am in a delicate state?” Eliot gestures to his midriff, were underneath his dress shirt lay his mending surgical scars. He feigns struggling to pick himself off the ground and returns to the dual sunning chairs they’ve laid out to overlook campus. Margo doesn’t buy one measly second of his act, nor does she accept his misdirection.

“Eliot,” she warns, “there is only so much wistful moping I will tolerate.”

“Like I would ever do something so gauche as moping.” Eliot pours himself another drink from the bottle of Vermentino they’ve been splitting. It’s a good vintage; white grape, Meyer Lemon, and a mineral flourish that fades into the sweet finish on his tongue. “However, if the mood struck me, I could possibly angst, if not lament. Or languish, I could definitely be up for some languishing in my woeful state. Perhaps even some pining.”

“Wow,” Margo deadpans. “That’s much more dignified than moping.”

Eliot nods and swallows the rest of his glass. “And less likely to give you crows feet.”

Margo shakes her head and reclines in her chair, shading her eyes from the sun. She was truly a vision when she was not terrorizing him with his inner truths. “You know, Eliot, instead of laying out here with me and ignoring everything I say, you could go talk to him.”

“Bambi,” he stalls, “I’m not ignoring you.”

She turns pointedly. “How many post-grad jobs have I been offered?”

“Three,” he guesses after a long brain-racking moment.

Margo sighs. “Not even close.”

Eliot drains the last of the wine straight from the lip of the bottle and conjures up another in its place. A red this time, a Nebbiolo he knows she likes with hints of cherry and strawberry mash. She accepts the bottle in lieu of an apology or any close to a definite plan of action on Eliot’s part. “Tell me again about the next stop on High Queen Margo’s extensive resume.”

Margo’s shoulders sag, resigning herself to Eliot’s avoidance. Together they settle back in under the sun and Eliot tries his best to hear her, to not think about a pair of wounded brown eyes, spatters of blood sticking to long dark hair, and a painfully quiet begging for it all to just stop, please god, stop.

* * *

Try as Eliot might, eventually evasion as a battle tactic was going to fail him. It is why he really should have had a plan B. Any sort of plan really, for what to do when he wanders into the poky little galley kitchen of the Cottage one morning and finds Quentin already there. Leaning over the sink, spoon clinking against the ceramic bowl in his hand, he mumbles “Morning,” through with a mouthful of cereal. 

Eliot flinches. Manages only to blink a few times and open and close his mouth like a dying fish. Quentin is different now, he realizes. In this light, caught in the glassy amber straining in from the window, his hair is longer, tucked behind his ears. His eyes are softer, too. The constant thread of panic that stitched through his features has abated somewhat. He’s good. Better than Eliot hoped.

“Quentin,” Eliot says at long last, not sure in anyway what he plans to follow it with. “I was just… leaving…”

“You’re not going to eat?” Quentin asks, gesturing to the fridge and cupboards.

“No I… I have an appointment.”

Quentin stands up straighter, dropping his half finished breakfast in the sink. “With who?”

“Lipson,” Eliot lies.

“I thought she said you were in the clear?”

“Oh she did,” Eliot assures him. He hates the sudden dip between Quentin’s brows. The burning concern. He shouldn’t worry about Eliot. He’s done enough for a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact. “Lipson says I have a… a secondary diagnosis we need to attend to. I believe she called it an _acute narcissism_ with a dash of _delusions of grandeur_.”

The smile that breaks over Quentin’s face reminds Eliot of the first sunrise he saw climb over Castle Whitespire. “Only a dash?”

“Well,” Eliot cocks his head, considering, “we have to wait for the test results to come back to be sure.”

“So long as it isn’t terminal,” Quentin laughs. It’s a good laugh. It makes Eliot almost sway on the spot the way it sounds like the silver wind chimes hanging outside the boxy little farmhouse in Indiana that Eliot will never return to. His voice crinkles the air just as softly, something small and perfect against the whole of the damage, something Eliot will always wish he had the foresight to take with him.

Eliot forces himself to look away casually, inspecting a cabinet handle. Because of course, Eliot has lost track of everything else he packed for his freshman year. The trinket would have ended up much the same way, forgotten and adrift. Quentin would be more of the same, no matter how hard he tried. Eliot is tired of ruining perfect things. He is learning to keep his hands to himself. Planning to learn at least, so he does not reach for Quentin when he steps closer, no matter how badly he wants to.

“Eliot—”

“I better go,” Eliot sutters out. “Can’t be late. For my appointment, I mean.”

“Of course.” Quentin runs a nervous hand through his hair. “But hey, El, after maybe we could—”

“Sure thing, Q!” Eliot says it too fast over his shoulder, no idea what he is agreeing too. But that smile is back on Quentin’s face and his knees are weak. He carries himself out of the kitchen under his own power somehow, the mantra spinning in his head; _stay away, stay away, it’s better this way._

* * *

Eliot wanders the halls of the Brakebills Main. The place feels lifeless without bookish psychics meditating in every spare corner and stray castings glimmering throughout classrooms. The grand walkways feel smaller somehow. The arches lead nowhere new. It makes sense seeing as technically Eliot is no longer a Brakebills student; none of them are. Less than formally graduated, they have their certificates. Henry is allowing them to crash in the dorms until summer’s end before he sends them all back into the world of their choosing. “Some of you I will miss, and others I sorely hope to never see again,” he had said in his most dean-like voice while they all huddled close in his office. He had been joking for the most part. At least that is what Eliot told himself leaning on Margo and his crutches and trying not to laugh.

It still hurt to laugh, actually. It had not been ideal but healing somewhere familiar had helped during his worst post-op days. The world had been a swirl of pain and medication and people asking and asking over again, _how was he?_ How did he feel? What was his pain on a scale of one to ten? He always lied about that last one. There wasn’t a numerical scale long enough for the kind of pain he felt in the medical wing when he first opened his eyes and Quentin immediately stepped back.

Shaking off the memory, Eliot pushes on a heavy wooden door and finds himself in Van der Weghe’s old classroom. He’d learned Popper’s one through three-hundred-and-thirteen in this dusty old room. He feels old as he sits down and even older when he puts his finger on the emotion welling in his chest; nostalgia. The question of what September would bring has been gnawing at him anytime he wasn’t suppressing some errant thought about Quentin. He decided against going back to Fillory; High Queen Fen had that covered, long may she reign. He certainly wasn’t staying in academia like Alice and Julia seemed so inclined to do.

The younger Eliot who sat in this chair next to Margo, fresh-faced and ready to gamble everything on magic, on being powerful enough to create an impenetrable visage around himself, he would have had a plan. He would have wanted to summer in the Hamptons and vacation in Nice. He wanted juliette balconies and room service and endless vintages of the good stuff. He wanted to fuck a few modern day artistes and be the next muse slash unattainable love of some hopeless poet. He wanted the endless parade of adoring faces and scandalized whispers trailing behind him wherever he went.

Instead he’d gotten a backwater kingdom, a soul destroying possession, a stomach wound from a goddamned battleaxe, and nothing to show for any of it except an unlived fairytale romance.

Eliot pushes back his chair. He surveys everything from the creaky floorboards to the walled Latin inscriptions. The musky scent of dust and ink long-since dried. There is the same old magic here, thrumming in the walls. But Eliot thinks maybe, if he tries, he could be ready for something new. He has to be. He leaves the room the way he found it, hitting the light on his way out. Padding down the carpeted corridor, he thinks that while he never got to say goodbye to Whitespire, one almost solemn adieu to Brakebills would have to suffice.

Eliot doesn’t return to the Cottage to pack. He can’t risk running into Quentin or losing his nerve. Besides, he has his flask, the silk shirt on his back, and Margo’s number memorized by heart. All he could possibly need, really. All that’s left is to cross the illusion ward and step back out into the world. 

* * *

It takes some fast talking, a few improvised spells and a lot of bald-face lies, but Eliot procures himself a suite in the old flatiron building. The realtor is another magician, swearing up and down that there is no better place to stay in New York and that Aleister Crowley himself once occupied the space. A fun perk, Eliot decides as he signs a false name to the lease, but it’s not what he is here for. All he needs is an unassuming life filled with simple necessities; booze, pills, and parties. This sort of humble living reminds him how he once considered himself the spiritual successor of the romantics, up there with the likes of Keats, Shelley, and Byron. His nightly hangovers and the bedroom conquests are testaments to this. Falling short of founding his own little hellfire club, he’s fucked his way through half of New York’s art scene and half the Ivy League as the days blur by.

One morning he stares a little longer than is needed in his boudoir mirror. His breath leaves a layer of fog on the glass before he realizes what is the matter. With a spell Eliot summons a steel edge and cuts his hair until he looks like someone he might recognize. If he cannot manage that, he at least wants to look less like the vision last seen by every one of his victims.

In his bedroom on top of his chest of drawers is his old phone. It’s always charged but untraceable. The tally of unread messages from Quentin and Margo increases daily. Eliot knows he owes his old high queen another phone call. He has never made good on his earlier promise of calling more regularly. She still leaves frankly accusatory voicemails. He can’t blame her. This is the longest they have gone without seeing each other since… ever. He never divulges his location, but he assures her he’s still partying somewhere in Mykonos.

Quentin’s messages will go unanswered entirely.

For all the noise and whirlwind chaos Eliot invites in his nighttime, he does like peace and quiet in his morning afters. It’s why he finds it so frustrating to find the afternoon has rolled around and he is still is shooing out some stray collegiate darling from Ithaca. He was a half decent distraction, but now the poor thing is looking for his Cornell sweatshirt he swears he left at the foot of Eliot’s bed. Eliot closes the front door on his bewildered face knowing full well where the sweatshirt went. Into the closet with the rest of his ill gotten collection. Eliot is a completionist, and he’s only missing Brown and Dartmouth now, soon he’ll have the whole Big Eight represented on that rack.

Listening for footsteps wandering out of range, Eliot flops into his worn leather loveseat. Adjusting his day robe, he decides a life of lechery and abandon beats being king anyday, even if the silence weighs heavier than ever.

Or perhaps that was the hangover.

Eliot is drifting off, or trying to — otherwise the daydreams comes and he thinks endlessly about mosaics and stone fruit and a lifetime of memories he can’t get back — when a knock comes at the door.

Eliot groans. He stole that sweatshirt fair and square. He’s not handing it over. Wrenching the door open reveals someone else entirely.

“Mister Waugh.”

“Henry?” Eliot glances past him down the hall searching for the reinforcements. Neither Margo nor Quentin are anywher to be found. It is only the dean in his usual imposing ensemble, suit and tie matched with a wry expression. “What are you doing here?”

“I would like you to know I had to consult with Neeny Bigby just to acquire this address. Do you know how fickle pixies are?” Henry Fogg lets himself in. He leaves his blazer on the back of one of the dining tables. “When she comes knocking for recompense, you will be hearing from me.”

“Wait, are you saying it took a dual casting with a pixie to break through my wards?” Eliot beams with glee when Henry nods. “Didn’t think it was possible, but I've outdone myself.”

“Yes, I had known you were so proficient at illusion magic, you never would have set foot in that cottage.”

“Dare to dream.” Eliot tightens the belt on his robe. He is quite removed from his far-flung fantasy of the fucking this particular master magician. Has been since second year.

“Well?” Henry demands, “offer a man a drink. It’s called hospitality.”

Eliot putters over to the bar to fix something strong. He knows Henry will drink anything, from bottom shelf swill to the highest notch centurian whiskey. Eliot thinks a more middle of the road option will do the trick. While Eliot is picking a bottle of brandy, he sees Henry musing over something on the table. Old magazines, an antique copy of Popper’s manuscripts, and of course the comic books.

“I see you’ve been doing your homework. You never did get the chance to break in Lord Nigel identity. Have you gotten to the part where he falls hopelessly in love with Janet Pluchinsky?”

“Stereotypical compulsory heterosexuality at its finest.” Really, Eliot thinks the comics are nothing more than boring drivel but he needed a frame of reference for his new alias. So far living as Nigel Caspar had suited him. Eliot hands Henry his drink and they toast nothing as they knock their glasses together. “I wouldn’t have bothered, but it didn’t feel fair that everyone else got an amnesia vacation while I got fuck-all.”

Henry raises an eyebrow while spinning his drink in his glass. “Thought you were sticking to the story that you didn’t remember anything?”

Eliot grumbles, setting his drink down. “What are you gonna do, Henry? Rat me out?”

“Yes, actually. Because if my office gets one more panicked phone call from Quentin L. Coldwater about your little vanishing act— and don’t try to deny it, you _disappeared_ yourself Eliot. People were bound to have questions.”

“Disappeared?” Eliot makes a show of yawning. “That’s a little dramatic.”

“And you’re the picture of the dull and demure.” Henry gestures around the extravagant surroundings; the gold embellished crown molding, the decadent marble fixtures and the silk upholstery. Eliot shrugs and leans back in his peacock blue loveseat. 

“I needed time away. Had to get back to my roots. Really take the time to be something other than a meat puppet or a figurehead or an ineffectual side quest character.”

Rubbing his face in frustration, Henry picks the violet velveteen armchair to sit across from him. “It’s been over six months.”

Eliot pauses with slight surprise. It takes a moment to think about the melting snow on his window ledge. “Thats… entirely possible. I may have lost track of time. That as it may, time really is a meaningless concept if you really think about it.

“I can recall thirty-nine world-ending timelines with perfect, painful clarity,” Henry scoffs.

“Right… so you see where I’m coming from?”

“Eliot, I don’t hunt down alumni on a whim. It has escaped the notice of you and your friends, but I do have a job to do. Other young magicians who need my goddamn time and attention.”

“Ah, but you have never been above favoritism!” His cheeky aside doesn’t earn Eliot a laugh and now he is starting to feel irritated. “What, did you think I was dead?”

“Figured it was a fifty-fifty split,” Henry tells him in his level, unambiguous tone.

“Fuck.” Eliot had not considered everyone jumping to the worst possible conclusion. If Quentin thought that— 

Eliot shakes his head, forcing the thought down. No. He had not done anything wrong. Everyone was safe and Eliot had every possibly liberty to do as he wished whether or not anyone else agreed. Free will was a bitch like that. “You can quit with the disappointed look, Henry. Do I have to remind you I was possessed and ridden around by a monster so inhuman we could only call it The Monster?”

“It hasn’t slipped my mind.”

“I can’t go back… that’s the truth, alright?” Eliot sweeps away from his seat. Through his thick black-out curtains he inspects the plaza below. The daily commuters and cars move along busy and guitless and Eliot wants more than anything to be one of them. Truly faceless and nameless and insignificant. “Please don’t tell him where I am.”

He sighs, “and what about Margo? The rest of your friends?”

“Henry, don’t make this difficult.” Eliot snaps. For a vindictive second, Eliot misses the Beast-inflicted blindness that Henry bore so ignobly for so long. Eliot would not feel so transparent if Henry’s eyes were still trapped in darkness. It would not be so obvious that this was only ever about Quentin.

“I am not your teacher anymore; it is beyond me to judge you. From what I can tell, your only crime here is wanting the comfort of anonymity to indulge in a myriad of vices.” Fogg finishes his drink. He runs his finger around the rim of the glass, causing a spell to flicker around the edges. The glass sparkles and refills itself. He waits no time downing the glass.

“I am shocked you’re not telling me to clean up my act, face my demons, or something just as sage-like albeit hypocritical.”

That warrants a chuckle from the dean.

“Eliot, after all you have been through, you are entitled to a little reckless living. I can’t tell you how drunk I got when the Beast was finally dead.” Henry rises and places a gentle hand on Eliot’s shoulder. It is perhaps the most tender gesture he can recall receiving from the cranky old man. “However, if you really need it, my final piece of wisdom is this; no matter unbearable it may be to contemplate, there are people out there who care about you. And you need to remember they are also entitled to their own recklessness.”

With that, Henry pulls on his blazer and heads for the door.

“Wait, what the hell does that mean?” Eliot calls after him.

“We’ll all find out eventually, won’t we?”

And with the last of his famed cryptic bullshit, the door closes behind him.

* * *

In the week after Henry’s visit, Eliot double checks his wards and his alias spell almost daily. He feels the web of magic pull tight around him and his deluxe little hideaway. There’s no seeing through his illusions. It’s a shame that Brakebills never offered minors in disciplines. His specialty would always be telekinesis, but Eliot is far too good at running and hiding; it shows in his magic and he really deserved some form of accolade for it.

He wasn’t lying when he told Henry that he had no intention of living as Lord Nigel forever. Eventually, he had to go back, didn’t he? He would have to answer for all of it, to Margo and the others. But not here, not now while his chalice is full and there’s a pair of hungry eyes vying for his attention in his bedroom. To Eliot’s credit, this bedmate looks nothing like Quentin and Eliot takes that as a sign of progress. The first few nights in his new apartment was a mortifying parade of dark-eyed knock offs and stuffy studious nerds with a love of genre fiction. Except for when the man is down on his knees and Eliot wraps his hands in the long hair he realizes his mistake. From there all he can feel is a cool spring morning in Fillory. He can smell the woodfire, the fresh dew on the foliage and he’s lost in the slow covetous yearning that has nothing to do with the mouth on his dick. 

Eliot unceremoniously kicks him out after, which his temporary plaything is perfectly content with. When Eliot gathers his own coat and vestments to get the hell out of his apartment and out of his own head, he deletes the man’s number from his burner phone. It’s not the first contact removed this way; it is happening more and more these days. Quentin still bleeds over into everything, feeling closer by the day, not farther. Close enough that he’s sitting on the bench outside Eliot’s building.

Eliot nearly walks past him. He does walk past him, in fact, before going ramrod straight and whipping around for a double take.

“Quentin?”

It takes a lot of willpower not to rub his eyes like he’s looking at a mirage. He really is there. In his slacks and a thick woven sweater with unfortunate elbow patches instead of a winter appropriate coat. He’s slumped over and fidgeting with his hands. Sitting beside him on the bench is Julia. She has got her hand on Quentin’s knee and gives it a supportive squeeze before Quentin nods back at her. For some unknown reason glares at Eliot like she wants to hex him six ways from Sunday as she wordlessly departs, and leaves the two of them alone.

“What are you doing here?” is all Eliot can think to ask.

“You changed your hair,” Quentin marvels, his mouth agape. Eliot’s ears burn red but not from the frost in the air. Fuck, when did he last hear that voice? He can’t get his pulse to settle down. His heart feels determined to pound loud enough for Quentin to hear and decipher its Morse code. “Sorry, I just, I had to see that you were alright, ” there is a tense tinge to his voice, like he is afraid of something/ “But you’re fine. So don’t worry, I’ll leave you alone.”

And with that, he turns to leave. And Eliot should just let him. He should stay put, stay silent, let Quentin go like he swore he would if this ever happened again, somehow or someway.

But Eliot has always been shit at keeping his promises.

“Q, wait!” Eliot’s not sure what he means to follow that up with. He can’t bear the sight of the back of Quentin’s head. He regains functionality in his legs and manages to step closer. It’s like a spell they know by heart, synchronized with each other as Quentin moves closer too and before Eliot can stop it, they’ve embraced.

Then the city is deserted. The traffic disappears. There’s no sound or movement anywhere. How else could he explain how all he can hear is the sound of Quentin breathing, unless there is nothing else in the world but the two of them. Quentin steps back slightly. His head is angled up to see Eliot better and their faces hover too near to each other for a moment.

They stop touching, and the world returns. The noise, the smells, and even some asshole in a construction vest brushing past them in a hurry, yelling, “I’m walking here!” like a horrendous New York stock character.

“It’s good to see you, Q,” Eliot admits lightly, as if he weren’t already missing the way Quentin smells. “But you didn’t have to come all this way.” 

Quentin’s face hardens. “Twenty blocks.”

“What?”

“That’s how far I walked from my place to yours. Twenty blocks. For months, you were barely a bus ride away! You were right here in the city this whole time. Not in Cabo or Acapulco or any of the made-up places you kept texting Margo—”

“Those are all real places,” Eliot insists, deliberately dodging the point.

“You didn’t say goodbye!” Quentin inhales sharply. “You didn’t say anything to anyone! Do you know how scared I was that something happened to you? That maybe you were—” Maybe he was an empty vessel again, Eliot thinks, filling in Quentin’s silence. That maybe he was out killing and maiming all who dared cross him. “It’s me right?” Quentin asks, shaking Eliot from his spiral. “Me that you’re avoiding? That’s fine, I can take a hint but I can’t handle not knowing if you’re okay or not.”

“It’s not you, Quentin,” Eliot swears. It rings hollow.

“Then why do you only answer Margo’s texts? You talk to Josh more than you talk to me!”

“Once! Once, I texted Josh back, that doesn’t count.”

“You think that’s what I care about?” Quentin wrings his hands, voice choked with disbelief. “Do you know what I went through just to get here? Fogg wouldn't give you up and even Alice and Julia couldn’t get the locator spell to work.” 

Eliot’s thoughts freeze for a moment, “then how _did_ you get through my wards?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Quentin sniffles, and Eliot tells himself it is from the cold. When Quentin rubs the back of his neck, his go-to move when uncomfortable, Eliot can briefly see a spellbinding sigil on his palm. He half wonders where it is from. “Eliot, the fact that you thought you needed wards at all… when you could have just talked to me.” Quentin looks everywhere but at Eliot. “Y’know, I used to think, once we got that… that thing out of you, that we could, I don’t know… that all of us could just, maybe stop being chosen ones for five minutes and breathe.”

“That’s what I’m doing, Quentin. Tell me you understand that.”

“Together, Eliot. I thought we could do it together.”

“Not everything is a quest, Q.” Eliot regrets the words once they’re out of his mouth. Regrets the way Quentin flinches ever so slightly. “Some things we have to do alone.”

Quentin shakes his head but he doesn’t argue. “I should have listened to Alice. She told me to give you your space.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets and looks at Eliot long and hard. “She also told me to tell you that she’d love to see the spellwork on your wards. She’s working in the library if you ever want to.”

It feels ridiculous, standing there in the bristling city cold, talking about Quentin’s girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, or perhaps not-yet-again girlfriend. The burning feeling fighting back against the wind chill feels a little too much like envy.

“If you’re avoiding the others just because of me, you should stop. Margo misses you and it’s shitty of you not to talk to her because of me.”

“That’s not—” Eliot takes a step forward but Quentin holds out his hand to stop him. Eliot sees the sigil again, more clearly this time; the symbol for a Word As Bond casting.

“I’m glad you’re doing okay, El. I really, really am.” Quentin presses his mouth into a thin hard line. His eyes are bright and hurting. “And I’m sorry you had to do all this. Sorry that I couldn’t help you.”

Down the block, the foot traffic picks up and a mass of bodies encroach on the space between them. Quentin waves a weak goodbye and vanishes without a spell.

* * *

Eliot’s got his share of old wounds but this one takes the cake. It’s a long time before the imaginary axe he feels twisting in his stomach stops hurting. Sex and alcohol don’t numb him as well as they used to. All the distance he thought he put between this shrinks down to nothing and no illusion charm will fix that.

It’s how Eliot ends up applying for a library card to the Manhattan branch of the Order of the Library of the Neitherlands. It arrives punctually and promptly in his mailbox and he’s off through a portal, finding his way to the front desk of the archive.

“I’m looking for a librarian? Alice Quinn?”

The twee little thing behind the receptionist stand looks at him curiously. “You mean Head Librarian Alice Quinn.”

Damn. Eliot missed that plot development. He nonetheless allows himself to be led into a grand looking office. In front of a series of gyroscopes and mirrors is a familiar blonde figure, pushing her thick-framed glasses up her nose. With her spectacles in place, she spots him.

“Eliot?”

“Hermione?” he counters cheerily. He brandishes his parcels. “I brought the spellwork you requested.”

She crinkles her nose at the Potter reference. “I didn’t think you would actually come. Even after you applied for the library card. I broke Library regulation codes to get you that rush order, just so you know.”

“Wow,” he marvels, “you really are in your element.”

“And are you done pretending to be in Lord Nigel’s?” She wags a finger at him with her other hand on her hip. “For total disclosure, I’ve read some of your books. I know all about the mess you’ve been making.”

“I hope you got an eyeful; full frontal, the works.” Eliot pauses. “But if you read my books, then you knew where I was. Why did Quentin say you couldn’t help him find me?”

Alice cocks her head, her blond locks swaying.

“Ah, you _lied_.” Eliot sits on Alice’s desk, careful to look effortless and not knock into some delicate light refracting telescope. “And on my behalf… Why?”

“I’m no stranger to self imposed exile. I can’t condone the hell you put Quentin through, but I understand.”

“Really?” Eliot can’t keep the disbelief from pouring out.

“Really.” Alice’s smile is soft. The last time she looked at him so trustingly, he was maybe one of two friends she had on the Brakebills campus and had yet to sleep with her boyfriend. Eliot had sworn at their coronation that he would be a better friend, but death and disasters always kept them at arm's length. Now Alice greets him like an old friend anyway. Maybe it would have been more fitting to have dubbed her Alice the Kind.

“Show me this spell you wrote,” she clears room on her desk, levitating away her instruments. “I think it will fit nicely in the appendix of your second volume.”

Eliot furrows his brow. “I didn’t know I could have more than one book?”

“It happens rarely, but when you die and don’t stay dead, we start a second volume.”

“I’d remember being dead if that happened… wait, you mean the mosaic?” He had died in that timeline, died of old age with grey hair and wrinkled hands. “You… you know about that?”

Alice gives him the smallest affirmative acknowledgement while her eyes devour his spellwork. “Your conduit configurations are interesting. A lot of out of the box thinking. Which is obvious, since it’s you we’re talking about.” Alice squints to read his writing. “Honestly, some of this shouldn’t even work but you balance out Altair Ali’s primal circumstances with McCabe’s lesser titration.”

Eliot wants to bask in how impressed she is with his work, but he can’t get past it. “What did Quentin say when you asked him about the mosaic?”

“I didn’t ask him about it.” Alice is still dragging her finger across the scratchy lines of drawn out magic. “It made sense, though, with the way he’s been acting. With everything that happened at the Seam…and why he had to find you so badly.”

Despite answering his question, she still brushes it off so easily, like the pair of them living and sharing a life together in a half remembered dream was not some earth-shattering, heart-wrenching revelation. 

And maybe it wasn’t.

“It really doesn’t bother you? When you’re with him?”

Alice glances over her lenses. “Is that what you came here to ask me about? About how me and Quentin are?”

Eliot looks away. “If I did, I’ll never admit it.”

Alice rolls her eyes and also rolls Eliot’s papers before storing them into a metal canister. A chute appears on the wall next to her desk and she opens the hatch to send his spell down a whooshing pneumatic tube. She closes the hatch and turns to him. “I happen to know an excellent book about the propagation of enchanted conifers. I really think you would enjoy it.”

Eliot eyes her sideways. “Botany has never really been my thing.”

“Nor puns, it seems,” and she laughs at the look on his face. “I’m surrounded by books in here, Eliot. Books about everyone and everything. Sometimes I peek.” Eliot doesn’t blame her. If he were half the unbearable genius Alice Quinn is, he wouldn’t be able to resist either. “Really, what I keep learning over and over is that, the things you think fall in the margins, they’re never really gone. I love Quentin. He loves me. We have entire chapters dedicated to each other and that is never going to change.”

Eliot feels his throat tighten. There’s that familiar envy again. Except what he wants is this peace of mind that Alice seems to so effortlessly embody now. He wants to learn how she could figure out how to love Quentin and not feel like it was killing her every time she held it in her hands. Eliot blinks hard, realizing he’d been right the first time; Queen Alice the Wise was the only moniker that fit.

“I’m glad you’re finding your way back, Eliot.”

“Who said I was back?”

Alice looks at him with a mix of pity and pride. “Something I figured out, always pushing myself to the side, is that the world passes you by. It sucks but, sometimes taking the time to heal all by yourself means—” 

“People move on without you?”

“That things happen without you.” Alice reaches over to squeeze his hand. Eliot squeezes back. “If nothing else, promise you won’t let the second volume of Eliot the Spectacular be a snooze-fest.”

Eliot can’t help but smirk. “Never.”

* * *

All Eliot’s attempts to reach out to Margo are rebuffed. Meaning she is beyond pissed and is going to make him work for it. It’s fine though; Eliot always loved a challenge. It doesn’t take any real sleuthing to find out Margo is making a name for herself in the magical and mundane circles of New York. But Eliot is surprised to find an enchanted flyer with her handiwork all over it advertising a magical rave night in the hedge witch district.

He heads down to the listed address, a factory in Dumbo of all places, and finds the event in full swing. It’s nothing like what he expected. Underground chic, just this side of too-grimy and louder than Eliot’s tastes. He pays cover charge without getting huffy over knowing the event promoter personally and biblically and wades into the throng of dancing bodies. There’s grinding and shaking and narcotics changing hands and Eliot finds himself a hedge witch with long hair and innocent eyes. The remembelnce breaks Eliot’s resolve and he tells himself its not at all misplaced sex when he drags the wannabe magical flunkie into the bathroom stall. There’s sounds of dubstep everywhere and too much bass and the body underneath him doesn’t smell like tweed or dry wood or the mossy knolls of Fillory. H comes quickly and unsatisfactorily and after, the hedge tries to tell Eliot his name. It slips in one ear and out the other. It’s not Quentin, so how could it matter?

Departing the bathroom, he runs right into Josh, who looks at him like he’s a ghost. “I can’t be seen with you.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot says, offended, “but if one of us is going to pull that card, it should be me.”

“You broke Margo’s heart!” Josh jabs a finger into Eliot’s chest, and yes it does hurt. “Dont you say something quippy and undeniably hilarious. I mean it, Eliot. You really, really hurt her.”

“She knew I was coming back. Eventually! She had to know.”

The explanation doesn’t appease the angry naturalist. “She’s halfway through a supervillain origin story! You were ghosting her long before you left, and now she thinks she did something wrong!”

“Of course she didn’t!” Eliot shouts as the latest track gets to the bridge.

“She doesn’t know that!” The bathroom door pops open and out walks Eliot’s disheveled hedgewitch still tucking his shirt back into his pants. He winks and blows Eliot a kiss before he heads towards the soundstage. Josh looks even more unimpressed. “You really came to crash the magic squad’s party night — without RSVP-ing! — to bang hedges? Dick move!”

“I will not be judged by the likes of you, Hoberman!”

“Fine! Fine! I’ll just go and take my VIP pass to the lounge, _where Margo is_ , and _you_ are not allowed!”

The botanist has spirit. Maybe he could keep up with Bambi afterall. Eliot grins and grabs his shoulder before he leaves. “When Margo takes me back, it’s gonna be on the condition she dumps you for a weightlifting plant pusher!”

Josh smirks right back, “We’ll see about that! Now quite being a dick and go say hi to Quentin.”

The dance hall gets quieter for a moment. “He’s here?”

“At the bar!”

Eliot knew there was a chance he would be here. A little part of him had been banking on it. Another part of him could not believe he had gone so long without him only to see him twice in the span of such a short time. Pushing through the crowd, Eliot finds the bar easy enough. The bartop is clearly all Margo. Tasteful and immaculate frilly drinks with raunchy names and skyrocket prices. It’s easier to hear there, the bartender didn’t even need to strain to hear Eliot’s order when he sat down in the stool next to Quentin. Julia again is already sitting next to him. She doesn’t even look at Eliot as she departs without a word, still angry for some reason.

Eliot really cannot be bothered to figure out why she hates him, so he ignores her and turns to Quentin.

“Fancy meeting you here. Having fun?”

“Not as much as you,” he accuses, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Eliot winces. Quentin must have seen him arrive, or saw him dragging that hedge away to the restroom. “Okay, I deserve that.” 

“No, you don’t,” Quentin mutters. He looks like he would kick himself if it could manage to not fall out of his stool. “I just… I’m happy you’re here. I’m glad you don’t feel like you have to hide.”

“It wasn’t about _hiding_ ,” Eliot insists yet again. “Besides, it’s not like you can’t have Magic Squad Party Night without _moi_.”

“I keep telling Josh to stop calling it that,” Quentin laughs. On instinct, Eliot leans closer to hear it better. Eliot has to remind himself why he left in the first place. He reminds himself of ruined kingdoms and failed plans and dead bodies. He eases back away, yet again.

Quentin notices. “You want to go somewhere quieter? There’s a smoking area out back.” Eliot means to say no, but Quentin is already moving and he’s already following. His limbs are traitors or that drink is hitting him just in time to make the worst decisions. They pass closer to the soundstage on their way out and Eliot gets a good look at who’s actually spinning the music.

“Is that… was that Penny?”

Quentin chuckles. “People still call him DJ Hansel, but yup, that was him.”

“Alice is in the library, Penny is back to being a DJ without a curse to his head. What’s next?”

At the back exit, both their hands are stamped with magical ink and they push their way through heavy metal doors. Quentin continues to update Eliot. “Julia is getting her Master Magician PhD, and Fogg refuses to give us our alumni keys, Kady is queen of the Hedges, the NYPD keep trying to bust Josh and find his marijuana crop… and I now own New York’s only magical bookstore,” he tacks on humbly.

“Wait, really?”

“Don’t make that face at me. I know it’s not as exciting as everyone else. Penny never stops making fun of me and Margo calls me a nerd everytime she comes into the shop. But it’s nice. It’s quiet.” Quentin shuffles on his feet, patting himself down looking for a carton of cigarettes. “We all had to find something to do, after the quests were over and magic was back.”

Eliot can picture it so clearly. Quentin in his sweaters, his cardigans, memorizing rows of fantasy books and magical texts by heart. He probably serves the worst coffee and buys baked goods in bulk from local hipster confectionaries. There would be a little bell by the door that rang anytime someone wandered in. Benches in the wider aisles and corner nooks where people could sit and read, unbothered and never pestered to make a purchase. For some reason it’s a perfect golden autumn in this imagined memory, and Quentin has one of the few curbside saplings in the city. He keeps it healthy with some borrowed incantations from Josh and it’s strong and healthy even as it sheds gold-red leaves that need to be raked from the walkway.

Eliot wants to know what it would feel like to open the front door of that book store. To pick through the shelves like he was waltzing in and out of Quentin’s curated mind. But he can’t. 

He just can’t.

Eliot sighs, half-hearted. “I’m sure it’s the best bookstore in New York.”

Quentin leans over and holds out his carton of smokes. Eliot accepts the proffered cigarette and for a moment their hands touch. He shivers, dragging his hand back like he’s been burnt with the guilt of it. He could die a dozen deaths and have a dozen volumes written in the Nietherlands and he wouldn’t ever forget the feel of those hands.

“Could you stop doing that, Eliot?” Quentin asks, his voice feeling small.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Q.” Eliot lights his cigarette and looks away stubbornly. He changes the subject quickly. “So, catch me up on all the gossip. What else did I miss on my sabbatical?”

Quentin gives him the most disbelieving look. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“C’mon, tell me. When are Julia and Penny getting married and making you a god-daddy?”

“They’re not.” Quentin takes a long drag. “They’re not together anymore, I mean. They’re still friends, I think, after all they went through. He had to choose to make her human again or let her be a goddess, and after that things got weird. Especially with Kady.”

“Kady?”

“She and Julia… they’re kinda sorta on the fence…”

“Oh,” Eliot laughs. “How long has that been going on?”

Quentin’s face is slightly guilty but he doesn’t stop talking. “Longer than either of them will admit. Pretty sure Kady fell in love with Julia back when she didn’t even have her shade. And you know how that goes. When people fall in love with you at your worst...”

“Its hard to believe it when you get better.” Eliot stares up at the empty night sky. New York City light pollution keeps it barren from stars. He inhales more smoke. “Yeah, I know what that’s like.”

Quentin looks ready to pounce on that, to throttle Eliot on his own words. But Eliot is quicker. “Probably doesn’t help that Julia and Kady were both in love with the same guy who wasn’t the same guy.”

“Yeah. Julia has her share of guilt over that. The only thing really holding her back, that she thinks she has to make it up to Kady somehow.”

Eliot blows a smoke ring. “That’s… understandable.”

“Well, I think it’s bullshit, actually,” Quentin snipes with a disgusted face. “It’s just two people making up reasons why they can’t be together. When you love someone, you tell them. End of story.”

Eliot laughs bitterly. “End of story, huh? That simple?”

“It could be.” He runs his hands through his hair, an aggrieved reflex, and Eliot can still see the Word as Bond seal still on his palm. “If you let it be.”

Throwing his cigarette to the ground, Eliot stubs it out with his heel. He can’t convincingly pretend that they are still talking about Julia and Kady, but he can sure as hell try.

“All the drama in the Magic Squad and I missed it. You really do lose the plot when you’re a demigod’s bitch.” Eliot sees the face Quentin makes. It’s painful to see, excruciating the way laying in Lipson’s hospital was. Seeing the same look on Quentin’s face while he was waiting to see the monster behind Eliot’s eye. “Sorry… sorry I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.” Eliot stares at his feet. He knew he would fuck this up. “I should get going.”

Quentin manages to look even more hurt. He makes the first move to leave. Quentin was always the braver one between them.

He slips something small into Eliot’s hand before he goes. It’s a business card labeled _Chatwin’s Corner_. Eliot wants to smile at the chosen name, but Quentin’s manufactured calm looks like it could snap at any moment.

“I know I can’t make you do anything,” Quentin confesses, miserable. “I can’t make you want to talk to me or be around me if you don’t want to. But you can come to my shop if you ever change your mind.” Quentin grits his teeth. “Or if you ever remember what it was like, that there was a time when you done _anything_ to make sure I didn’t end up locked away in some castle where you wouldn’t’ve ever be able to see me again.”

As far as parting shots go, it’s a suckerpunch that leaves him reeling. Quentin walks ahead and Eliot follows back into the warehouse, maintaining his distance. Once the doors are sealed and the boozy air surrounds him, Eliot lands on his next plan of action.

It’s time for him to get outrageously drunk.

* * *

Eliot loses track of his keys, his scarf, and the number of hands and mouths as the night wears on. He noticed hours ago that Quentin was slinking away from the party and out into the city streets. Penny’s music doesn’t stop baring and the bartenders keep pouring. They’re onto the last encore of the night when a guest performer climbs onto the sound-stage. It’s everyone’s favorite magical songstress, the magnificent Madam Orloff-Diaz. Her voice reverberates like thunder and cracks like literal lighting through the warehouse. Her high notes are like bliss against his disembodied mind. Eliot doesn’t have to feel, doesn’t have to think, he’s numb and he’s never going to come down.

Except he does come down. Somewhere between the mass exodus of partiers and the clean up crew marching in, Eliot is forced back into his body by the fleeting edge of euphoria ebbing away.

He’s flat on his back near the bar, blinking back bright lights and covering his ears as the sound-stage is packed up. He thinks he hears Margo’s voice, and the telltale sound of her retreating heels. She’s still angry. She hates him. That’s fair. Eliot hates himself, too.

A wild flurry of dark hair appears above him.

“Margo?” He croaks.

“Guess again.”

“… Kady?”

She reaches down to help him stand up. “I saw you dancing during my set. Didn’t actually believe it was you at first. I was so surprised I missed a note. Which is all your fault, just so you know.”

“What isn’t my fault?” Eliot asks, woozy.

“Oh, you’re having one of those come-downs.” Kady gently straightens his collar. “I promised Margo I wouldn’t let anything _too bad_ happen to you once I scraped you off the floor.”

“She still cares, huh?”

“It’s a bad sign that you look surprised about that, Eliot.” Kady pushes him towards the bar. All the liquor is gone, but she finds him bottled water. “These shows Margo and Penny put together are turning out to be a nice side hustle, so I’m not about to lose the gig because you’re being difficult. Drink the water. I got a promise to keep.”

Water washes down the rancid taste of a night of alcohol left in his mouth. “Then will you leave me alone?”

Kady shakes her head. “Nope.” Apparently, Kady a taskmistress with an iron hand because before Eliot knows what hit him, he’s frogmarched into joining the clean up effort. No wonder the hedges bow to her every whim. One of the hedges under Kady’s command offers him a little hair of the dog and his headache recedes. Eliot is never going to say another bad thing about hedges as long as he lives.

“Wait, aren’t you Lord Nigel?” asks a man with a hideous edgy haircut.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Eliot throws back at him. Eliot done folding chairs and making small talk. He hasn’t seen Kady in at least twenty minutes. He is ready to launch his escape plan. Eliot makes it to the other side of the door under the burning red exit sign, only to find Kady already standing in the alley.

“Heading out?”

Eliot places his hand over his heart. “My time of indentured servitude is over.”

Kady scoffs. “You know, if you’re ever interested, I run a sober circle coven in Greenwich.”

It takes a moment for the ludicrous nature of her statement to really hit him. “First of all, I have zero interest in anything to do with the Village, let alone sobriety.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is so. Honestly, how do you still manage to come to these boozed up raves? We’re already magicians, we can conjure mind-adling substances on a whim. Isn’t sobriety with magic already impossible enough as it is?”

Kady stands up straighter from where she was lounging against the brickwall. Eliot sees it then; the leader she hides under all that dark makeup and leather. “It’s harder with magic. But it’s not impossible.”

Eliot grimaces. “I commend you, but I don’t have a problem.”

“From what I saw tonight…” Kady tuts her tongue. “People who party like you do, they don’t last long.”

“I died of old age once,” he snipes. “It’s not all its chalked up to be.”

“You can joke, and you can deny it. But I’ve seen the look on your face before. I’ve seen it on other people, and I’ve seen it in the mirror. You look like someone who is tired of the way he’s living. Maybe it’s not the drugs or the drinking, but something’s gotta give.”

Eliot is tired of many things, but he sure as hell isn’t ready to admit it to his co-quester that he still barely knows after all these years.

Behind them, the door props open. Out steps Julia. Her eyes linger on Kady for a moment. Wow, Eliot thinks, the pair of them are entirely obvious. Julia snaps out of it a second later and thrusts a beer into his hand. She quietly sips from her own.

“What’s this?” Eliot rolls the bottle in his hands.

“A peace offering.”

“See, that’s more like it.” He accepts the drink and swallows it down. He doesn’t taste any alcohol. Kady throws up her hands, acquiescing to Eliot and Julia’s newfound camaraderie. 

She turns to Julia. “Thought Eliot was, and I quote, ‘dead to you’ for everything he put Quentin through?”

Eliot takes another swig from the bottle under Julia’s appreciative eye. “Maybe Miss Wicker just understands that people come to raves to have fun, not to be psychoanalyzed.”

“But you didn’t come here for fun, did you Eliot?” Julia accuses, her voice open ended and leading somewhere. Eliot knows the question is directed at him. It makes his feel… strange.

“No,” Eliot agrees suddenly. “I came here to make a big show of how hopeless and unloveable I am.”

“I knew it,” Julia hisses.

Eliot is dizzy, like his thoughts were wrenched out of him with such force he can barely stand the residual vertigo. “Wait, what?” He meant it. He meant all of it. But he had not meant to say it out loud. “I didn’t— Why did I say that?”

“You knew Quentin would see you and you knew it would hurt him,” Julia continues. “You did it on purpose.”

“Yes,” Eliot admits before he can stop himself. He shakes his head. He’s not sober but he isn’t drunk either. Still, the words keep coming. “Of course I knew. Of course it was on purpose. It’s better this way.” Panic races through him. “Why… Why can’t I stop— What the fuck was in this drink, Julia?”

“Jules? What did you do?” Kady pauses, apprehension edging into her voice. 

The accused party looks nonplussed. “Relax, it’s just garden variety truth serum.”

Eliot drops the bottle. It shatters into brown shards against the pavement. “I don’t care if you are a _goddess_ , you’re gonna pay this one.” He steps forward, and Kady pushes between them.

“Wait, stop, both of you!”

“If he wants a fight, that’s fine with me,” Julia says, cooly. “At least now he can be honest about that much.”

Eliot feels an ice-cold fury settling in his gut and clenching in his fists. He hasn’t hated Julia this much since she helped trap Quentin in a comatose nightmare back when he first enrolled. “What the hell is your problem, Wicker?”

“You’re my problem!” she shouts so close that she has to press her body against Kady’s back to scream in Eliot’s face. “You and all you’re _it’s me against the world_ stunts you keep pulling. Cutting all ties and vanishing into the wind, knowing how much that would hurt Q after everything he did for you! Like you don’t even care about him!”

Eliot can’t keep the roar down. “Of course I care!”

“Then why keep doing it?” Julia demands, pointedly. Abusing the nature of the serum, she knows he can only answer honestly if presented with a query. So Eliot doesn’t open his mouth. He refuses to answer. The potion isn’t compulsive if he shuts the hell up. If only Julia could follow suit. “After everything Quentin went through to get you back, you treat him like a stranger! Worse than a stranger, like he didn’t sacrifice _everything_ for you! I keep telling him, if you’re such an ingrate, if you really want nothing to do with him, he needs to just move on. But he can’t and he won’t. So, Eliot, what is it going to take for you to stop torturing him?”

“An axe to the stomach and an exorcism!” Eliot yells, lunging forward. Kady needs to keep both hands on his chest just to keep him back. “I don’t know if your forgot what actual torture looks like, but it involves more than me hurting Quentin’s _feelings_. It takes more than sparing him the trainwreck of a romantic dalliance with me. It takes actual blood-curdling terror. It’s him being held hostage to the whims of a child-brained psychopath. It’s him watching people be murdered all around him and being powerless to do anything about it. It’s him thinking he has to save me instead of protecting himself. That’s what me fucking torturing him looks like, Julia!”

“Wait… Eliot, _you_ didn’t do any of that,” Julia back pedals. The rage on her face visibly dissipated. Eliot eases up, realizing what he has said and Kady lets him slump to the side. “The Monster did all those things, not you,” Julia adds, quieter. Fuck, is that pity on his face? “You know that right?”

Eliot tries to form the words but they do not come. It doesn’t feel like the truth, so he cannot say it.

“Fuck, Eliot, do you really think—”

“Julia, stop!” Kady commands. “You need to go.”

“No, wait.” Julia doesn’t budge. “I was possessed by the Sister, I know, _I know,_ he couldn’t have changed what happened. If he thinks—”

She looks at him with actual sympathy; because she knows the truth, so why doesn’t Eliot?

“Jules, I mean it,” Kady warns. “You’ve done enough. Just go.”

* * *

Kady, who is quickly proving herself to be a Saint of the Downtrodden, drags Eliot to her safe-house in the Village. “We have a detox room. There is a cot and a lock. We even have clean clothes. Nothing too fancy. You can come down from the truth serum here, no one will bother you.” Eliot lets himself be guided to a rickety old couch instead of the cot. He collapses against the cushions. He thinks idly that he could sleep for a week.

He wakes up confused and with a half remembered loathing. Music, drinks, Quentin, more booze. Julia and the truth serum. It takes a moment to absorb his surroundings. The hedge den looks like a punk rock turf club. Everything is wood and brick scuffed surfaces. He barely gets the chance to deride the decor when he notices there is a poster board on the opposite wall littered with photographs. He is shocked when he sees a photo of Margo, her arms around Josh, leaning up to kiss his neck. In another photo he sees a candid of Penny and Alice eating pho. A row of photo-booth strips is devoted to Julia and Quentin making ridiculous faces as their tutting out spells. Eliot feels some anger abate, because Quentin truly is beautiful, happy and content when he is with her.

The anger returns when he sees that Todd and Poppy have a few snapshots on the board. There are no pictures of Eliot.

Grousing, Eliot spies a mirror next to a sink and cupboards. He figures one way to find out if the serum is still in his system and get the hell out of here.

“I am not in love with Quentin Coldwater,” he tells his reflection. The words hurt out loud, but the lie comes out fine. A good sign.

A door swings open behind him and Kady arrives with ice water. “Good. You’re up.”

“How long was I out?” he asks, accepting her offered glass.

“Two days. You had a lot of drugs in your system before the potion. Most of them magical. You needed a lot of rest.”

“You mean a lot of magical imbued drugs before I was _roofied_.”

“I’m not going to make excuses for Julia,” Kady promises. She looks disappointed, a little heartbroken as well.

“But?”

“But… Julia, she jumps the gun sometimes. Especially when it comes to Quentin. He’s been cagey about you, about everything since the Seam…” Kady trails off with her words, looking uncomfortable, like she almost said something aloud she was forbidden to speak off. “She worries about him. The two of them have all that history, and after he… She’s scared, is what I’m saying. You’re the easy target for all that anxiety.”

It doesn’t make sense. “Scared of what?”

“I don’t… I shouldn’t say… but she mentioned a few times that Quentin only stops talking to her before something bad happens.”

Eliot is sick of all her delicate dancing around the subject. “Bad how?”

“Bad like another stay at the hospital.”

Eliot groans, falling back on the couch. “She dosed me for that? Q isn’t getting committed over _me_ of all things.”

“Look, I’m the outsider here. But Jules, she gets cutthroat over the things she loves, and she loves Quentin the most. All I know is that since you’ve been gone, Quentin disappears a lot, and he doesn’t tell Jules where he is going. He was desperate to find you after you took off. When he found out Fogg knew where you were and wouldn’t tell him, he kinda lost it. No one heard from him for days and then he showed up again with a Word As Bond on his hand and said he had your address.”

“What?” Eliot shoots up from his makeshift bed. He has to steady himself against the scratchy thrift store furniture. “That’s where that came from?”

Kady closes her eyes, ruefully. “I knew telling you would just make you crazy, too. Julia’s got a theory that whoever he made a deal with is someone who had enough juice to hunt you down. Apparently your illusion wards are a real bitch, by the way.”

“And none of you knows what Quentin promised in return?”

Kady shakes her head. Somewhere, Eliot can hear Henry laughing at him in that familiar baritone.

“It can’t be good, though. Otherwise, he’d tell Julia. It has to be bad for him to keep it from her.”

“Fuck.” Suddenly, Julia’s underhanded tactics make a little more sense. Word As Bond pacts could not be broken. It’s a dangerous power to hand over to just anyone. But Quentin did it anyway. “Why would he do something so stupid?”

Kady laughs in his face. “Because despite how soft and nerdy he is, Quentin’s just like Julia. He does stupid shit when he’s scared.”

* * *

If Professor Sunderland were ever asked to give testimony to the character of Eliot Waugh, she would most assuredly swear that he was not above cheating. His second year exams proved that. It is this very character flaw that leads Eliot back to the Library. The more forthright choice would be to look up the address of the business card burning a hole in his pocket. One stop to _Chatwin’s Corner_ could give him the answers he wanted. All he had to do was talk to Quentin long enough to wring the truth out of him.

But a glance at his book would yield the same results. Potentially with a little less heartache. Potentially.

He’s wandering around the stacks for hours before he realizes that Quentin Coldwater’s book most likely earned restricted section status. You don’t save the world as many times as him, or fuck up as legendarily as he has in the process of saving the world, just to be catalogued with the likes of every random magician in existence. Eliot counters some security spells and makes his way to the lower levels. He expects to be caught by Alice at some point. He had a plan to shake her down for the truth if need be. Instead, it’s Penny who corners him. 

“What the hell are you doing back here?”

“The same goes for you,” Eliot snaps, not looking up from the mess he is making. “Last I checked, it was the other Penny who was trapped by the library.”

“Travelers founded the library,” Penny-Twenty-Three points out. “Before it was a fascist hell-house, at least. I work here every now and again to help Alice.”

“Didn’t realize you two were so chummy,” remarks Eliot, just this side of hostile. “Maybe you could call her down here to hand over the book I’m looking for?”

Penny is the picture of unimpressed. “Whatever’s got you acting like a belligerent white man, but you better pump the breaks before I drop your ass in another dimension. One without oxygen.”

Eliot exhales. The breath doesn’t feel calming. Nothing feels calming. Not while he doesn’t know if Quentin is in danger. Not while he doesn’t know if it is his fault.

“What do you know about the Word As Bond pact that Quentin made?”

Penny rolls his eyes, effectively communicating _not this shit again_ without saying a word. “I know as much as everyone else. He won’t say who or what it took, but it’s how he found you.”

Eliot seethes silently. All he wanted was Quentin to be safe. Instead he did this and Eliot can’t take it back or stop it. “Thanks for all your help, Penny. You are truly an invaluable and _irreplaceable_ resource.”

“Right, because I’m from another timeline. Cute.”

Eliot keeps scanning and tearing at the shelves. “Well you could have at least tried to stop him!”

“What? As the designated team asshole, I’m supposed to know when and how to stop Quentin from being an idiot? Did you really think Quentin would tell _me_ what’s going on in his Neverland-soaked brain?” Penny asks.

“He might’ve,” Eliot shoots back. “The two of you have your weird little bond. Both of you pretend you can’t stand each other but deep down, you’re the first to rush in and save each other.” Penny draws back, eyes bulging. He looks like he wants to say something scornful but nothing comes out. “What, did you think no one noticed?”

Penny scoffs, saving up a rack of books Eliot nearly lets hit the floor. “That’s a real fucking astute observation for someone who can’t admit how fucked up he is over Quentin.”

“We have our crosses to bear. Now would you please just help me? Give me Quentin’s book and you’ll never see me again.”

Penny mulls over the offer. He looks tempted despite himself. “Fine,” he decides. “Which book do you want?”

Eliot pauses. “What do you mean? I just want Quentin’s book.”

“Yeah, and I’m asking you which one do you want? The boring nerd escapades of Coldwater Volume One or Coldwater Volume Two?”

Eliot blinks once. Eliot blinks twice.

He remembers suddenly what it felt like, the first time he cast a spell. When telekinesis ripped out of him and shoved a fellow child in the pathway of a school bus. He remembers the hot dribble of blood flowing from his nose and the wracking guilt, the honest culpability that choked his chest. The pain that turned to hate and the hate that turned to magic, real and unretractable. A truth made physical and undeniable.

This is a different pain. This is a different denial.

“Quentin can’t have two volumes,” Eliot says, voice rising. “I have two. I know I have two because I died in the mosaic quest, and I came back. But Quentin didn’t die. So Quentin can’t have two volumes.”

The logic is sound. The logic makes sense. But the other man looks at him like it’s anything but the truth. Penny’s hard stare cracks wide open. He looks shocked. Worse, he looks sorry. “Eliot—”

“Are you talking about one of the beast timelines?” Eliot demands. That had to be it. That’s all that made sense.

“Those are different dimensions now, it’s not the same thing.” Penny expounds. His features are too grave, too somber to be a lie or one of his trademark insults. There is no humor in his body language that Eliot can see and it’s all wrong. “Are you being for real right now, Eliot? Did no… did no one tell you?”

Eliot can’t stop his fists from trembling. “Tell me what?” There was a time when he wore a crown on his head, but he had never sounded more commanding.

Penny swallows. More pity in his eyes. Eliot is connecting the dots even if he doesn’t want to. Because he’s seen this same pity over and over. In Margo, in Henry, in Alice, in Kady, and even Julia once she had heard his whole truth. Because they all knew and he didn’t.

They knew.

“What didn’t they tell me Penny?” Eliot repeats, one last time.

Penny exhales deep.

“That Quentin died at the Seam, He didn’t make it out of the mirror realm—”

It’s a good thing that Penny’s a traveler. It means he escapes the unbidden concussive blast that screams out of Eliot. Books go sprawling and pages are flying and the shelves go down like dominoes. There is chaos and alarms and weeping librarians all around him. But Eliot is still in the midst of it all, crouched down on the floor, still breathing harshly. He only rises when Penny leads Alice back to find him. He has not moved. He can’t. He feels too small, insignificant. He feels fourteen again. He feels like a killer.

* * *

The truth is, maybe Eliot’s always known. Maybe he woke up knowing. The same way he knows now, that beyond him through the wreckage, there is voices and exposition. Friends he once had, faces he once knew. More plot threads he missed. He cannot get the words out. He cannot keep the ache down. Unsteady as the moment he climbed out of that recovery bed, shaking and heaving. Suffering borne down on him, a knowledge felt too close, that something unbearable had taken place. An incalculable loss while he himself been lost. All his wasted efforts, running from it. All this time hiding rather than face what he still might lose. Eliot struggles to his feet, wiping the blood from his face and the dust from his clothes. He knows where he needs to go.

* * *

 _Chatwin’s Corner_ is everything Eliot pictured from the moment he first heard about it. It’s entirely Quentin. Too many books, all hardcovers lined along the stacks. Not a dusty surface in sight. One each wall there are chalkboards where patrons are allowed to scribble and doodle. Some leave quotes and page numbers. Some leave book recommendations. There’s even a magical sigil decoratively drawn in occult little circles.

Eliot closes his eyes and lets it all wash over him. Let’s the feeling of Quentin fill him up. This is real. He’s here. 

Quentin comes around from the back. He must have heard the bell above the door ring. “I don’t know how you got the lock open, but we’re closed— Eliot? What happened, how did you get in here?”

The answer is of course Penny; he traveled Eliot in and with a grimace as all the encouragement as he could muster, he vanished again. Eliot can’t bring himself to explain all that. Can’t imagine what he looks like to Quentin right now. This late night break in, finding him half wild, breathless, and terrified of things that have already come to pass.

After, Alice and Penny tried to explain it all away. The pair of them telling Eliot that they were with Quentin when it happened. Alice, with grace and gentility. Penny, with incredulity and ire. He seemed to be the only one who thought Eliot should have known from the start. Eliot could barely hear them, couldn’t let the words hit home. The horror of it all was already rectified by the time Eliot opened his eyes in the Brakebills recovery room. And still it is not enough. How could he make up for any of this?

Quentin's mouth isn't moving but Eliot hears everything he said all over again; how it’s all bullshit, all the ways and reasons two people can spin out of their own private hurts to keep hurting each other. Eliot is tired of looking for reasons to hide. He is tired of hurting Quentin.

Eliot cannot get his feet to move. They stand there, stunned, locked in their stances. Quentin staring at him in disbelief from behind his counter; Eliot staring back from behind every wall he’s built up out of self flagellation, out of remorse, out of guilt, out of pain, repulsion, neglect, denial, and fear.

But Eliot is good at wrecking things, especially when he turns it inward. Just this once, he can wreck the hell out of this barrier between them. He moves forward, one inch and then the next.

“Q, what I feel for you, what I’ve always felt for you… I want to tell you that truth and let that be the end of the story like you wanted… but it’s not. Because I’ve got some fucked up ideas in my head, about you and me and everything.” Eliot closes his eyes. “I didn’t even know how fucked up until your BFF dosed me and I had to say it, out loud.”

Quentin looks crushed. “She told me. I yelled at her, and I’m so sorry that happened, I’ll make sure she never does it again—”

“It’s not, I’m not even angry with her. She thought I was hurting you and I was. Because I… because I know, I feel, that I’m responsible for what the Monster did. All that carnage, and the pain, and the way you looked at me.” Quentin comes closer, ready to interrupt but Eliot won’t let him. “Don’t try to argue, just let me finish. I have to finish okay?”

Eliot smooths his fingers through Quentin’s hair as he nods obediently. “I need to finish, because I need to tell you everything, so that you can tell me everything. So let me go first.”

Quentin’s lip quivers. He stays silent.

“I am good at hurting people, I am good at letting them down. Always have been. Before the Monster, I felt like one. But I didn’t want to be alone. I hated being lonely. That’s why I held onto you and Margo and the others like it was gonna kill me. Until I became the thing that could have killed you.”

Eliot wishes he had more of that truth serum. It’d be less painful that way. But he knows it wouldn’t count near as much.

“When I woke up in Brakebills’ infirmary, and I remembered everything the Monster did, and I remembered our life and family together, and I remembered the promise I made to you that I was gonna be braver… I couldn’t hold it all together. So I ran, and I’m ashamed of that. I did a lot of stupid things, and I hurt more people than just you. All I did was drink and fuck and try not to think about you and it didn’t even work! But you…”

Eliot grabs Quentin’s hand and bares the offending sigil. “Q, you weren’t supposed to do this. You weren’t supposed to do stupid, shady shit like this for me. That’s my job, alright? I’m the idiot.”

“No, you’re not,” Quentin says softly, “and I’ve done worse.”

“Yeah, I figured that out in the library. Which I am now banned from for the next ten years.” 

“What? Why?”

“Because Alice was feeling generous, all things considered.” Eliot huffs out a harsh laugh. “I went there because I wanted to find your book, find out who you made this deal with so I could make their life a living hell until they released you from it. But I ran into Penny.” Eliot’s throat threatens to close up. It hurts to talk. “Penny didn’t know that I didn’t know what happened to you. When you went to the Seam. That you cast a spell in there. That you _died_ in there. For me.”

Eliot isn’t crying. Eliot is beyond crying. He can’t let go of Quentin’s hands.

“Eliot, I’m… Hey, look at me. I’m fine.”

Fine. What an empty word.

“You’re only here because Penny chose to make Julia a goddess again, instead of a human. If he hadn’t…” Eliot trails off, his brain cycling through an unbearable impossibility. “If she was just human—”

“Well, Julia used up all her divinity bringing me back, so she is just a human now.” And Quentin shrugs. “But that doesn’t mean she’s off the hook and I, I barely remember being dead. It’s not that bad, Eliot, I swear.”

It is not a good enough excuse. It is not a good enough explanation. Nothing could be. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn't _anyone_ tell me?”

“When? When, Eliot?” Quentin trembles tightly. “You were hurt and you were healing so slow. Telling you would have made everything worse.”

“Not knowing is what made it worse, Q!” Eliot brushes a stray lock of hair from Quentin's eyes. He needs him to see it. To see into him the way only Quentin did. “I didn't understand why Margo and the rest were dancing around something, or why Julia hated me so much. Everything you did, and I still ran away from you.”

“I thought we had time. Eliot, I thought we had all the time in the world to talk about everything. I didn't know you were gonna disappear! I would have told you everything if I had known.”

Eliot bows his head, presses his forehead to Quentin’s. He whispers, “I didn’t give you permission to die for me, Q.”

“Tough shit, Eliot,” Quentin swears as he reaches up and kisses him. The stone in Eliot’s chest cracks open, bloody and raw. Unbridled, his heart pounds the familiar song, the same two syllables over and over; _Quen-tin, Quen-tin, Quen-tin_. His hands are in his hair and he’s crowding him back against the nearest surface, covering his body and standing between him and the world. Nothing can touch Quentin now, not unless it goes through Eliot.

Quentin breaks away to breathe but Eliot doesn’t stop. He kisses Quentin's throat, never wavering as he chases the taste of his skin. He can’t get enough. He won’t ever have had enough. He loves the heady feel Quentin of pulse, erratic and desperate. He can feel him shiver and moan and how his body can call Eliot’s name a thousand different ways even when his mouth is otherwise preoccupied.

Quentin’s nails rake down the back of Eliot’s neck. Its a sharp sting, but the sensation burns right through him. It feels good. It feels real. It feels like it’s happening to a body that finally belongs to Eliot again. A body that is finally safe to share with someone he loves.

“Eliot, we should go—” Quentin can’t get the rest of the words out, not with his bottom lip between Eliot’s teeth. “We should go upstairs.”

“What’s up stairs?”

“My bed.” Eliot must look at Quentin like he is beyond comprehension, because he clarifies. “My apartment is above the bookstore.”

Eliot melts. He can’t help it. Because of course Quentin would want to live above his homespun bookstore, tucked away on his own top-shelf, somewhere warm and familiar.

“That’s a good idea,” Eliot says, breathless and hopelessly reverential. “I really don’t want to get banned from here, too.”

Quentin laughs. He’s glowing. Exhilarated. “Eliot, what did you _do_ to the Library?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning,” he promises. He follows Quentin to an alcove that leads to a roped off staircase. “I’ll tell you everything, I swear.”

* * *

In the afterglow, Eliot tries his damnedest to keep his shit together. They are really here. Both of them. It is like Fillory all over again, but better. This their world. This is their now. They choose the way forward, no mosaics required. Eliot is still too good at poking holes in his own happiness. He remembers one last thing they have to settle. He laces his fingers to Quentin’s hand, the one that bears the Word As Bond. “Who did you make the pact with?”

Quentin squeezes his eyes shut and goes red with embarrassment. The blush goes all the way down his barred chest. “Uh, well, um… it was kind of a warlock from… Staten Island.”

“Are you kidding me?” Only the lowest tier of Magicians called themselves anything like _warlock_. “Staten Island?”

“His specialty was scrying and I had to find you!”

Eliot sighs. He thinks he finally understands what Henry meant about recklessness. Every emotion Quentin inspired in him left him wholly devoted, consequences be damned. He would have to learn to make his peace with that same feeling from Quentin in return. Perhaps now they could temper each other. Maybe now they could just live instead of continually throwing themselves on the pyre without ever once admitting it was for love.

Eliot wraps his arms around Quentin's waist. “What does this warlock want in exchange?”

“Something to do with a dungeon in the Bronx. I didn't catch all of it, but it sounded very quest-like when he talked about it.”

“That’s hardly mortal peril inducing. Why not tell the others?”

“I figured you were right, about the thing you said when I found you, having to do some things alone. I was gonna go by myself.”

“The hell you are.” Eliot starts up, propping on his elbows. “In the morning I’m calling Margo and you’re calling Julia. Bambi will bring Josh, Julia will bring Kady. And Alice is basically omniscient now,” he tacks on with a wave of his hand. “She’ll know to bring Penny.”

Quentin chuckles. “Just like that? We’re a team again?”

“We were overdue for a quest anyhow.” Eliot runs his fingers through Quentin’s hair again. He can’t seem to stop it. He just loves the feel of it. And then Eliot remembers the one thing he forgot to say. The most obvious thing. “I love you, Quentin Coldwater.”

Quentin, rolls over to him from under the sheets. He beams. “I know.”

Eliot’s head falls flat to the pillow. “You did not just Han Solo me.”

“I kinda did.” Quentin leans over him to kiss his mouth again. He still tastes sweet like the first bite of a peach, soft as a ripe plum under it all. “I knew the truth the whole time, deep down, I think. I just didn’t understand why you wanted to pretend. Why you kept acting like it would kill one of us to admit we ever loved each other—”

Eliot winces. “Too soon, Q.”

Quentin apologizes with another kiss. “It doesn’t matter now. Because you knew too, didn’t you?” And Eliot nods. He’d always had all the proof he needed underneath all his denial.

“Yeah, I knew. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it anyway.”

Quentin smiles, “I love you, Eliot.” And when he laughs, it’s as beautiful as ever. The sound of a Fillorian birdsong, the comforting rumble of a sleepless city, the flicker of old wind chimes and the fluttering of pages turned at last. It’s the sound that tells Eliot he’s finally come home.

**_fin._ **


End file.
